Back in the Saddle Again

My first baby steps in blogging were tentative and cautious. I thought I wanted a website with a blog on the side. I knew I wanted to write about my love of travel and the experience of encountering exciting and interesting places near and far. But as time went on, I slowly realized that it was all wrong. What I really wanted was a blog – a place to share my travel experiences – thoughts, reflections and photos.

It is all a learning experience.

The focus was right, but the name was now wrong. Perhaps in the future, but for now it isn’t about a tour company. Yes, I am a tourist guide and I certainly lead tours, but my blog focus was writing. Muddling along I learned so many things, but still I struggled with the appearance of my blog. I wanted a cleaner, more streamlined look – something simpler, easier to navigate.

Then there was the matter of my “followers”. While the ‘akismet’ widget (please don’t ask me to explain it – just google it!) trapped all the bogus comments, I was inundated with strange ‘followers’ who had very weird email addresses. No one ever left a comment, save the few real readers who actually read my posts. Why, I wonder, are so many people from France following my blog which is neither about nor in, French? I have some wonderful posts in mind to write about France, but haven’t done so yet. Very strange.

And so I stopped writing.

New name. New theme. New look.

I decided to make a change. A fresh beginning.

Apply the things I’ve learned and re-launch with a newly found sense of direction.

I had a perfect image in my mind of what I wanted my blog to look like. I had found plenty of blogs that I loved – and being able to make virtually anything from a “recipe”, I worked on learning to build a website that included all of my “must haves”.

That is not nearly as easy as it sounds. For someone who knows nothing about “code” and for whom most of the language of websites is foreign….what is the difference between a “header”and a “title”? …I have struggled with templates, colours, fonts and text.

Every theme choice came with myriad decisions. I liked the font on that one but not the colour scheme. Great layout on that one but boring fonts. Why can’t I just find a theme that looks the way I want it to, with a format I like, colours I love and a perfect font as well?

Clearly it wasn’t happening.

To paraphrase O’Toole’s Corollary to Murphy’s Law:

Everything is harder than it seems.

Everything takes longer than it should.

Murphy was an optimist.

So after much throwing up of hands, wailing and gnashing of teeth, I’ve settled on a theme, a colour and a font.

6 Comments

Thanks! The problem is to stay focused on one thing! Working on a site is like having ADD – I’m working on a post- oh, wait the title font needs to be changed. Where is that page? How do I know to which line that refers? If I change that, will it change other things as well? Round and around we go! It’s great learning, but it makes your head spin!